Lets Ask Bill W. Q&A no.11

Have the Traditions been widely accepted?

Answer
When they were first written in early 1946 as tentative guides to help us hang together and function, nobody paid any attention except a few "againers" who wrote me and asked what the hell they were about.

Nobody paid the slightest attention but little by little as these Traditions got around we had our clubhouse squabbles, our little rifts, this difficulty and that and it was found that the Traditions indeed did reflect experience and were guiding principles. So they took hold a little more and a little more so that today the average A.A. coming in the door learns at once what they're about, about what kind of an outfit he has really landed in and by what principles his group and A.A. as a whole are governed. (Transcribed from tape, Fort Worth, TX, 1954)

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